Eating Poetry

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart, I never will deny her, who suffered death because she chose to turn. By Anna Akhmatova

I’d give you another day dizzy  in its bracket for the reluctant circumference of a sad sad satellite’s antiquated orbital stoppage. You can’t jump with a lead foot, can’t anthropomorphize insect anticipation, can’t pixelate postcard nostalgia, can’t trace a boy’s tiny hand and call him king of anything that crosses your path, your past, your iconographic reluctance to let go the toehold of ordinary New York lasting so long at night, so lusty in traffic & another orphan absently kicking the underside of an orange plastic chair. Poems shouldn’t make you wait for them to finish. Like love, they should finish making you wait. By Noah Eli Gordon

Father studied theology through the mail And this was exam time. Mother knitted. I sat quietly with a book Full of pictures. Night fell. My hands grew cold touching the faces Of dead kings and queens. There was a black raincoat in the upstairs bedroom Swaying from the ceiling, But what was it doing there? Mother's long needles made quick crosses. They were black Like the inside of my head just then. The pages I turned sounded like wings. "The soul is a bird," he once said. In my book full of pictures A battle raged: lances and swords Made a kind of wintry forest With my heart spiked and bleeding in its branches. by Charles Simić

Give me a church made entirely of salt. Let the walls hiss and smoke when I return to shore. I ask for the grace of a new freckle on my cheek, the lift of blue and my mother’s soapy skin to greet me. Hide me in a room with no windows. Never let me see the dolphins leaping into commas for this water-prayer rising like a host of sky lanterns into the inky evening. Let them hang in the sky until they vanish at the edge of the constellations —  the heroes and animals too busy and bright to notice. By Aimee Nezhukumatahil

your face turning from mine to keep from cumming 8 strawberries in a wet blue bowl baba holding his pants up at the checkpoint a newlywed securing her updo with grenade pins a wall cleared of nails for the ghosts to walk through By Solmaz Sharif

What women wander? Not many. All. A few. Most would, now & then, & no wonder. Some, and I’m one, Wander sitting still. My small grandmother Bought from every peddler Less for the ribbons and lace Than for their scent Of sleep where you will, Walk out when you want, choose Your bread and your company. She warned me, “Have nothing to lose.” She looked fragile but had High blood, runner’s ankles, Could endure, endure. She loved her rooted garden, her Grand children, her once Wild once young man. Women wander As best they can. By Marie Ponsot

There will be no edges, but curves. Clean lines pointing only forward. History, with its hard spine & dog-eared Corners, will be replaced with nuance, Just like the dinosaurs gave way To mounds and mounds of ice. Women will still be women, but The distinction will be empty. Sex, Having outlived every threat, will gratify Only the mind, which is where it will exist. For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs. The oldest among us will recognize that glow— But the word sun will have been re-assigned To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device Found in households and nursing homes. And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged, Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift In the haze of space, which will be, once And for all, scrutable and safe. by Tracy K Smith

All my feelings are different and this one is the most Of all places here where women once retired from the men for fear of boring them I am so bloody in my own bath of wild hairs that I couldn't possibly join you tonight for that colonial thing Heroin or whore Babylon or Bethlehem No matter what I'm followed by mosquitos Flitting dicks who want me to teach them about themselves But everything I know is contained in capsules of macha that break down in my bloodstream And I wouldn't recommend it for the fairer sex who should buck up and study up on their condition I used to feel sick for all my sloth but not anymore In wanting to please I have sinned In leaning in I have sinned In breaking in two I feel sin So Vete ya A haircut and a hard cock is all I need To govern a family My rod cutting them down supplicant on the ground For I was the first real white girl ever born in this country of flat skulls That's why I'm so cocky with my staff and my rule rock hard and inconsistent with my favor The mouths of L'Age d'Or sucked well at my pre-war stockings before cocktail hour Bells rang and trays of mosquitos were served with tarts We hadn't meant to kill them with La Macha which includes but is not limited to: a goddess religion unfaultering at the altar of shade an erotics of object-identification and compassion extending beyond the grave My sister and I drank mournfully but afterwards we still danced all night wearing quite literally bedazzled bustiers and veils of a dead boy's smoke que mala after beating their macho dead in ultra-feminine swoops How do they want us to think of them now our brothers haviing left so little charisma behind on the internet to aggrandize Such small mosquitos And though we are mourning we are still so macha as we chip the thin teeth of traitors and huff the scent of babies and slap each other on the asses and father seven times and punish the bull with its own marbled horns But though we're cocky we are still martyrs My sister says quita la macha and I'm like why It's okay to make up slogans in the spirit of revolution and she's like ok but after you systematically destroy machismo you must put his teeth to gnash at your engorged breasts for any sort of catagenesis to occur and I'm like that could be hot But it isn't the new love conceived by and for macha or is it? idk idk either i really dk So we taught our brothers all these methods of cameo that they may take a small symbol of macha to wear around their necks to the part of culture where the money used to be kept May they remember the strength of their mother's biceps as they show mercy to their fathers who are teleological till the end of supremacy which is the beginning of macha Kiss the black lips that feed you the corn hips that rock you and blight the prayers after you've said them Santa Mala Madre de Mala ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora y en la ahora de nuestra muerte Hand me my beads War without end Amén By Monica McClure

It is still raining and the yellow-green cotton fruit looks silly round a window giving out on winter trees with only three drab leaves left. The hot plate works, it is the sole heat on earth, and instant coffee. I put on my warm corduroy pants, a heavy maroon sweater, and wrap myself in my old maroon bathrobe. Just like Pasternak in Marburg (they say Italy and France are colder, but I’m sure that Germany’s at least as cold as this) and, lacking the Master’s inspiration, I may freeze to death before I can get out into the white rain. I could have left the window closed last night? But that’s where health comes from! His breath from the Urals, drawing me into flame like a forgotten cigarette. Burn! this is not negligible, being poetic, and not feeble, since it’s sponsored by the greatest living Russian poet at incalculable cost. Across the street there is a house under construction, abandoned to the rain. Secretly, I shall go to work on it. By Frank O'Hara

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself. By Philip Larkin